MRI brain image classification—a hybrid approach

The present article proposes a novel computer‐aided diagnosis (CAD) technique for the classification of the magnetic resonance brain images. The current method adopt color converted hybrid clustering segmentation algorithm with hybrid feature selection approach based on IGSFFS (Information gain and Sequential Forward Floating Search) and Multi‐Class Support Vector Machine (MC‐SVM) classifier technique to segregate the magnetic resonance brain images into three categories namely normal, benign and malignant. The proposed hybrid evolutionary segmentation algorithm which is the combination of WFF(weighted firefly) and K‐means algorithm called WFF‐K‐means and modified cuckoo search (MCS) and K‐means algorithm called MCS‐K‐means, which can find better cluster partition in brain tumor datasets and also overcome local optima problems in K‐means clustering algorithm. The experimental results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than other algorithms such as PSO‐K‐means, color converted K‐means, FCM and other traditional approaches. The multiple feature set comprises color, texture and shape features derived from the segmented image. These features are then fed into a MC‐SVM classifier with hybrid feature selection algorithm, trained with data labeled by experts, enabling the detection of brain images at high accuracy levels. The performance of the method is evaluated using classification accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The proposed method provides highest classification accuracy of greater than 98% with high sensitivity and specificity rates of greater than 95% for the proposed diagnostic model and this shows the promise of the approach. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 25, 226–244, 2015